Crowd Cheers as Sea Turtles Return to the Sea

A sea turtle rescue center in North Carolina cares for and rehabilitates
injured sea turtles, and returns them to the ocean amid cheering
crowds. Sea turtles are resilient, but they are slow to recover. So the
Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center spends a lot
of time and effort to help save loggerhead and other Atlantic Ocean
turtles.

Crowd Cheers as Sea Turtles Return to the Sea

A sea turtle rescue center in North Carolina cares for and rehabilitates
injured sea turtles, and returns them to the ocean amid cheering
crowds. Sea turtles are resilient, but they are slow to recover. So the
Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center spends a lot
of time and effort to help save loggerhead and other Atlantic Ocean
turtles.

Sea turtles are the canaries of the
ocean. If this ancient creature who has existed since before the age of the
dinosaurs, who survived all the cataclysmic events that reshaped the planet. If
they are in trouble, we are in bigger trouble.

How the sea turtle hospital came to be.
Well, we didn't do it, a turtle did. One little tank in a volunteer's backyard
was the start of the sea turtle hospital.

KENNETH LOHMANN, PROFESSOR OF MARINE
BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL:

Very few hatchling turtles survive to
adulthood. Most of the estimates are somewhere between 1 in a 1000 and 1 in
10,000 but historically, those turtles that did survive to adulthood were able
to live for a number of years and produce many, many offspring.

What turtle hospitals do is take some of
those older individuals. that would otherwise be lost, and return them so that
they can fulfill their natural function of replenishing the population.

Turtles are profoundly affected by
pollutants, in particular, plastic debris. Loggerhead seem to be programmed
genetically to bite anything that is floating in the ocean. Before the ocean
was littered with debris, that was a very good strategy for survival.

I see plastics constantly in this
hospital. A balloon floating on the water looks like a nice tasty jellyfish to
them and they're going to eat it. You get enough of those inside and they're
going to clog up the intestinal track and it may die.

Injuries are very diverse. We do get
things like shark bites, prop cuts, turtles caught on hook and line, we have
the net fishing. The turtles get entangled in the net.

Somewhere around 90% of our turtles
survive. Which is an incredible thing for rehab.

Every turtle that we release takes away a
piece of all of our hearts. It's a wonder anything's left with going over 400
with this latest release but it is very important to put a creature of the sea
back in the sea, because with all the dangers involved, that is where they
belong and I had to reconcile myself to the fact that we might spend years and
a lot of time and energy and effort and love getting that animal ready to go
back home, and it might not last past the first wave.

I had to struggle with that and then I
knew, that to be a real sea turtle again, even if it's only for minutes, or a
day, of a week or a year, is what it's all about.

You feel that surge of exuberance from
the turtle that is pushing away from you, you that have cared about it for so
long, and it's gone.

Crowd Cheers as Sea Turtles Return to the Sea

A sea turtle rescue center in North Carolina cares for and rehabilitates
injured sea turtles, and returns them to the ocean amid cheering
crowds. Sea turtles are resilient, but they are slow to recover. So the
Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center spends a lot
of time and effort to help save loggerhead and other Atlantic Ocean
turtles.